Unseen PowerPC: the Cores that Didn’t Make It

MacSlash has an original editorial regarding different PowerPC projects that never made it to shipping. It mentions things like the obscure PowerPC 615 that could run x86 instructions, or the PowerPC 750VX, which would have been IBM’s answer to the Motorola G4. This article reads like a requiem, but lest we forget: here, here, here, and of course, here. I’m starting to believe IBM won’t miss Apple all that much.

What heat problems? Core 2 is the most technologically advanced, energy efficient chip, coolest operating chip (in regards to clock speed) on the consumer market; quite frankly, if you look at the features of the chip, it gives me the willy’s how complex it is!

Even if IBM did for example, go with the 750VX, the problems still would have remained in regards to performance issues; it wasn’t just battery or performance, but a whole string of issues that when put together equated to a big problem for Apple in the long and short run.

IBM and Motorolla couldn’t keep up with Apples demands – IBM wanted nice long cycles between pushing the clock speed up; Apple needed short bursts and rapid updates as to keep up to date with the latest Intel and AMD offerings; ultimately IBM had to ask themselves, are they in the consumer market for CPU’s or would they be better off working with consumer companies where by they can design a processor, stick to a speed, and pump it consistantly out of the factory with the same specifications for the next 3 years.

Ultimately, it was more cost effective to go and design custom chips that need updating every three years rather than trying to update their processors every 3 months, resulting up higher and higher costs for the company.

“IBM and Motorolla couldn’t keep up with Apples demands – IBM wanted nice long cycles between pushing the clock speed up; Apple needed short bursts and rapid updates as to keep up to date with the latest Intel and AMD offerings”

Low margin toys? Seeing as IBM has all 3 major game console manufactures using IBM chips, I’d have to say whatever the margin, the sheer amount of sales will be amazing. The big picture is what IBM is looking at, and apple is a very small part of that picture

You’re right in that the important thing here is the number of units over which the development cost is amortized. An Intel design has a lifespan of 18-months to two years. Every cycle, hundreds of millions in R&D costs are incurred developing an improved design. That’s fine for Intel, because in that period, it ships 70+ million chips. For IBM and Apple, the equation was very different. The product life-cycle was the same (or at least, should have been the same, to stay competitive with Intel and AMD), and the R&D was barely cheaper (because IBM used more automated methods, which again hurt PPC’s performance relative to x86), but even in its best years Apple could never move more than a few million chips of a given architecture over an 18-month period.

You’re right in that the important thing here is the number of units over which the development cost is amortized. An Intel design has a lifespan of 18-months to two years. Every cycle, hundreds of millions in R&D costs are incurred developing an improved design. That’s fine for Intel, because in that period, it ships 70+ million chips. For IBM and Apple, the equation was very different. The product life-cycle was the same (or at least, should have been the same, to stay competitive with Intel and AMD), and the R&D was barely cheaper (because IBM used more automated methods, which again hurt PPC’s performance relative to x86), but even in its best years Apple could never move more than a few million chips of a given architecture over an 18-month period.

True; I mean, if Apple were churning out machines at the same rate as Dell – 5-6million per quarter, 24-25million per-year, although the margins for IBM wouldn’t have been great, it would have covered the cost of processor design alot more, and as such, put IBM in a position where they could compete with AMD/Intel.

Then again, the PPC fiasco with Apple can be seen right now with the situation of Sun and its gradual pulling out of SPARC from the workstation market; their main focus is now selling AMD equped machines; once the number of SPARC workstations drop to a level that is unviable, you’ll see their main focus switch to the volume low end gear, which requires rapid update cycles, to AMD and for their high end, long life gear, it’ll rely on SPARC – but even then, its going to be difficult to justify given the rapid improvements in the Intel/AMD world.

The question is, in the not too distant future, will we see SPARC and PowerPC be releganted to insignficance.

“The question is, in the not too distant future, will we see SPARC and PowerPC be releganted to insignficance.”

Agreed. And it’s a shame. PPC COULD have buried X86. In retrospect, if MSFT had ported NT 4 to PPC, like they said they were going to do, it would have increased the volume of chips. But they couldn’t do that, because even in the Mac OS 8 and 9 days, pre-OS X, MSFT would not have wanted people to compare Mac OS to Windows on the same hardware. People would spend NO time in the Windows partition.

Agreed. And it’s a shame. PPC COULD have buried X86. In retrospect, if MSFT had ported NT 4 to PPC, like they said they were going to do, it would have increased the volume of chips. But they couldn’t do that, because even in the Mac OS 8 and 9 days, pre-OS X, MSFT would not have wanted people to compare Mac OS to Windows on the same hardware. People would spend NO time in the Windows partition.

Not correct; what Microsoft needed, wasn’t Apple, but hardware vendors to provide PowerPC hardware, the problem is, IBM wasn’t willing to work with third party hardware vendors to provide them with motherboards and processors – and even TODAY they still won’t; try ringing up IBM as a small hardware company interested in selling PowerPC equiped hardware, and they’ll tell you that you must purchase atleast 10,000 units.

IBM wanted to be an Apple; they wanted to control the hardware, they wanted to control the software – just look at OS/2 and how that died a misserable death; they did little to encourage third parties to provide it pre-loaded resulting them being the only ones, IBM did very little to promote the idea of an ‘openstandards based’ PowerPC which Dell, Compaq, HP, Digital and them all provided workstations, desktops and servers using.

Also, even if there was a slow uptake of Windows NT, there was nothing to stop IBM from porting OS/2 to PowerPC or even making AIX consumer friendly via the knowledge which they acquired from OS/2 in how to provide a nice gui etc.

It’s not really fair to count the 970 R&D seperate from the PowerPC R&D. The cost to design the 970 as a whole architecture was probably not appreciably less than the cost to design Core 2 or K8. and of course, don’t forget the expense of maintaining high-end chip fabrication capabilities, which costs enormous amounts of money. In reality, all this stuff, for IBM, is subsidized by their server business. IBM Microelectronics usually loses money.

R&D should have been a lot cheaper on the 970 as it wasn’t a completely new design. The core was just a modified POWER4.

What I don’t understand is why IBM never did a laptop version, they could have sold that into embedded markets, put it into blades and would have of course made Apple more than happy.

Because the 970 was built in the same spirit as the P4 – long pipeline, high clock speed, very little concerned paid to power usage, heat disappation, and if you look at the situation now; they’ve gone even MORE extreme than the P4.

Even if Apple were to have stuck with IBM, they would have been screwed as the next geneation of processors wouldn’t have addressed the power and heat issues which were need as due to the comfined space of a laptop. The only alternative was to wait till Motorola pushed out there vapourware that is their dual core, 667Mhz fsb etc. chip, that seems to have been promised each year, and failed to deliver each year.

Ultimately it was the failure of IBM and Motorola to merge their semi-conductor units or IBM purchase out Motorola’s semi-conductor business that has resulted in this needless duplication of resources, that if combined, would provide the necessary economies of scale to drive down per unit costs.

Because the 970 was built in the same spirit as the P4 – long pipeline, high clock speed, very little concerned paid to power usage, heat disappation

No, I’m talking about mobile chips, these use low power transistors to cut power, it limits the clock speed but cuts power consumption sharply. They do this with the 750s but have never done this with the 970.

and if you look at the situation now; they’ve gone even MORE extreme than the P4.

No, I’m talking about mobile chips, these use low power transistors to cut power, it limits the clock speed but cuts power consumption sharply. They do this with the 750s but have never done this with the 970.

They were designed to be lower power and low heat disappation on day one – they were used not only in computers but embedded devices; it was merely a spin off that they provided reasonable desktop performance considering the main concern was embedded.

How so?

Have a look at the POWER 6 design for instance; I’d hardly call that a conservative, ‘doing as much work per clock cycle”, low power usage and heat disappation design – its the P4 ideology taken to the extreme/

In the article PPC980 was called a rumor, but I think it’s more. IBM uses PPC 970 in its blades and in one quite cheap workstation. So either they will disconinue these products in the feature, or they will need a successor chip. Maybe they put a Cell as CPU for blades, but I’m not sure that Cell is capable enough for general purpose computing without adapted software. So probably there is still a need for a general purpose CPU for a cheap development workstation and for the blades. So PPC 980 (or how it will be called) is more than pure speculation.

Have a look at the POWER 6 design for instance; I’d hardly call that a conservative, ‘doing as much work per clock cycle”, low power usage and heat disappation design – its the P4 ideology taken to the extreme

POWER6 uses a simpler design in order to increase clock speed, they’ve also changed how they design the circuits and this has made the chip a lot more efficient. They’re doubling clock speed but keeping the pipeline the same length.

Going for maximum work per cycle works but has it’s limitations and can slow some operations down. Going for a higher clocked but simpler design doesn’t necessarily mean higher power usage, e.g. the cores in the XBox 360 use less than 30W each but have high FLOP ratings.